The influence of crisis emotions and attitude towards health information crisis behavior in social media among youth in Malaysia

Social media is a one-stop centre of information that increased consumer dependency to seek and share information and protective action during public health crises. This scenario leads to the dumping of various information, including health information. Hence, the study is conducted to discover the relationship between crisis emotions and attitude in health information crisis in social media among students in Malaysian higher education institutions. This study utilized a quantitative research approach through a cross-sectional design. A total of 471 respondents from selected higher education institutions participated in the present study through a simple random sampling technique. Results showed that there is a significant relationship between crisis emotions towards youth behaviour. The finding also indicates that a moderately significant relationship between attitude toward youth behaviour. Analysis of multiple regression also shows that crisis emotions and attitudes were significantly contributed to the proposed model of youth behaviour in the health information crisis in social media. Thus, the model reflected the importance of crisis emotions and attitude as predictors of youth behaviour in health information crises in the context of social media. Emotion and attitude play a critical role during health information crises. Emotion and attitude are the driving forces behind the interplay of relationships on social networking sites. They can trigger online viral sharing that can spread both positive and negative sentiments like wildfire.